After school, Merin and I went behind the gym. Everything was fine until it wasn't.

Merin started sweating a lot, as a guy in a tight black leather jacket approached us.

​​

I guess reality finally hit him.

There was no one else in sight. This whole place felt desolated.

Honestly, this almost felt like we were dealing drugs or something.

"Helio?" As usual, the guy looked nonchalant. He did look good in that leather jacket though.

"Hey." I wasn't enthused even a little. I just wanted to get this over with.

He grinned. "Well, I guess the product's original then. For a moment I thought this might have been a scam." He had way too much confidence.

I almost felt bad for the guy: almost.

"Anyway, here's the shard." I threw it at him.

"Shard?" He caught it.

I gave a side glance at Merin and he was shaking now. 'Did you seriously tell him, I'd give him a core?'

I guess it wasn't just a bit of exaggeration.

"I don't know what kind of deal you two had but-" But I didn't feel like scamming anyone, so I just wanted to come out clean.

"Yeah, I know, this is worth a lot more." Clyde eyeballed the shard like crazy. He swung it around, almost made the damn thing touch his eyes. He was going crazy. "I'll give you fifty, gold, is that okay?"

What was this guy saying? I again, turned my head to my left and Merin was now shivering like crazy.

"Si-Sixty five!" And Angelmen was actually raising the price too.

"You're not messing with us, right?" I knew we were wrong to try to trick him but how could he play around like this?

But I guess we deserved this.

"You're right, you're right! I'll give you one hundred gold, but that's all I have. Please-" He grabbed my hands. Again, it stung. "Please?" unfortunately, puppy dog eyes didn't work with that face.

"Fine." If this guy wanted to be scammed that badly, then what stopped me?

"Yahoooooo!"

The moment I said okay, Clyde jumped around in excitement like he'd won the lottery.

Shouldn't I have been the one to jump like that, after all, I was the one who was getting the money? 100 gold was like two whole months of mom's salary, meaning, I was rich!

I kind of wanted to jump around too, but I had to play this cool.

Merin shook so much that he finally his legs gave up and he sat down on the ground. I guess everything went over his head.

"So, why are you buying this?"

"I've been searching for this for over ten years. Thank you so much!" The guy wasn't answering me one bit.

I took the shard off his hands. "WHY?"

"Me-medicine." He looked away a bit shyly. "You know my condition. This is the core of that two-headed snake right? It has regenerative powers. Though a shard, it'll still do miracles!" He squirmed around. "For others, it might be a rare core, but for me, this is the rarest thing on the planet."

Again the guy squirmed like crazy. What was he, a maiden in love? I sighed. This just got a lot more complicated.

Meaning I could have wrung out everything from him. But I wasn't that inhumane and I was kind of content. "Okay." I gave him the shard. "You can pay me in installments." I tried sounding nice, but in truth, I was just doing it for my sake. I didn't want to land on too much money and get corrupted and stuff.

And I knew for a fact that getting too much money on my hands was a bad idea.

"Brother! I knew you'd understand." He again grabbed my hands. "Finally!" He stretched his hands towards the heavens. "I can stand up!"

My hands again hurt, but not as much as I thought it would.

"Uh-huh."

But the sheer edginess this guy was giving out, was rubbing off of me. But I guess he had his reasons.

He proceeded to give me ten gold. "I'll pay you over the course of next two years." He grinned.

"Fine by me." Basically, I was fine with just five gold today, but since this guy was so eager, I didn't really say anything. And he didn't seem like the type to break his word. After all, he seemed to be too proud for that.

"If you'll excuse me!" He left while jumping around.

I looked at Merin and he was ready to wet himself.

"Well that was something." I had money and now things felt a bit brighter too.

"Uh-huh."

My bandages were coming a bit undone. "Guess I'll have to redo these." I helped Merin get up. "I'll head over to the nurse's office. You wanna come along? We could always go to the café and celebrate with some food." This deal wouldn't have been possible without Merin, so I had to show my gratitude.

"Yeah, I don't think my heart can take anymore. I'll just head over to Nat's and rest a bit."

He wasn't fooling me with rest. There were all sorts of things written on that face of his. Hard to imagine just moments ago he was quivering like a kid. I guess he could change pretty fast.

But I didn't want to overstep my bounds. "Suit yourself. I'll pay you back later." I still owed him a silver but I kind of didn't have change on me at the moment.

"Yeah, fine by me."

***

The nurse's office was close to the gym, so it didn't take long.

"Anyone in here?"

The nurse was out and I didn't see any students in here either. Come to think of it, I was probably the only one who came to the nurse's office on a regular basis or at least more than any other student.

'Guess I'll have to do this on my own.'

I sighed. If it was one hand, I could have easily done this, but both of my hands were kind of out of commission.

'I guess, there's no choice.'

I grabbed some gauze and some disinfectant. The bandages were already loose, so I didn't have to do much to open them completely.

But when I did, I was in for a major shock.

"WOW!"

My wounds were in the process of healing already.

I still had scars and some even got a bit inflamed, but that was just skin deep. In reality, I was healing more than the things were doing damage to me. Yesterday, I had burnt blood vessels everywhere and Johnathan's mom had explicitly told me to come to the nurse's office first thing, but I kind of forgot: more like I subconsciously avoided this place. So I thought I was in for a lot of trouble, but I guess that was uncalled for.

'But when did I get enhanced healing?' Even gramps only had good healing, but not enough to have his hands mostly healed from something severe in just a day or two. Or maybe he had that kind of power but I just wasn't aware of it?

At this point, I didn't really know and it didn't surprise me as much either.

And just when I was about to rub the disinfectant on my hand-

"Oh my god!" A wild nurse appeared. "We gotta get you a shot right now!"

It almost felt like my heart would stop.

"I'm pretty sure, these will heal, so don't wanna."

"I don't care if you wanna or not. You're gonna! You've got sepsis!" The nurse was standing by the door and judging by the things, she wasn't letting me go.

Sweat started to pour. I wanted to run away. Right now! "Ca-can't we, just stick to oral meds? And-and how could you be so sure of it? Look at me, it's just some inflammation." I chuckled but it sure wasn't working.

"You're not afraid of a syringe, are you?"

"O-of course not. Why would I be?" I was definitely not afraid, okay?

How could I, a Romswell, be afraid of needles? That was absurd!

"Oh, I see." The nurse grinned. "Don't worry, it won't hurt one bit."

"That's what they always say."

Her grin intensified, my breathing skyrocketed.

She grabbed my shoulder with that grin and dragged me to a corner. I was powerless in front of this tyrant.

She rubbed something against my arm and I closed my eyes.

"OWW!" I really wanted to run away right now!

"Don't be such a baby, I haven't even touched you with the needle yet."

"Wait, wha-" I opened my eyes and looked at her.

She proceeded to impale me.

Oweeee! Oh, it actually didn't hurt as much.

"All done." The nurse smiled and moved away.

"That's it?" I stared at the nurse with severe confusion. 'Why the hell do I feel so disappointed?' All my life I thought getting a shot was so painful that you'd want to rip your arms off, at least that's what cousin John had told me. But now, now I was just disappointed.